L et’s say an asteroid or technological mishap wipes out 99.9 percent of humankind, and all of civilization’s inorganic material achievements along with it—computers, power lines, buildings, all of it. The seven million humans left on the planet, while a tiny fraction of what the species used to be, are still many more than the few hundreds of the endangered cheetahs or orangutans currently around. Also, let’s say that those surviving humans are not spread so thin that their reproductive success is at risk from the mere improbability of finding a mate. How long would humanity linger? “Not long” is a good bet. Our teeth and nails haven’t been deadly in ages. Scavenging for hunting implements might turn up a knife or gun, but blades rust and break. And gunpowder? What is gunpowder, again?.
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